The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has inaugurated the 2021 Micro Enterprise Grant to 2,160 Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) in Borno State.
The programme is being implemented in collaboration between the Borno State Government and SMEDAN under its Conditional Grant Scheme.
Gov. Babagana Zulum, stated this at the inauguration of the exercise on Friday in Maiduguri.
Zulum lauded the Federal Government for the launching of the programme in Borno, which he said was fast recovering from insurgency.
He said the programme would create employment opportunities and help in projecting the business potentials of the state.
The governor said that his administration had so far disbursed over N3billion as grants to women and SMEs in the past two years.
“We also established new vocational centres and revived old ones.
“The essence of this scheme is to stimulate the SMEs with the aim of serving as vanguards of rural industrilisation and poverty reduction to enhance livelihood of our people,” Zulum said.
In his remarks, Dikko Radda, Director-General, SMEDAN, said the scheme was aimed at promoting the activities of micro enterprises across the country in the area of capacity building, access to financing, markets, among others.
“Objectives of the scheme include moving micro enterprises from the informal to the formal sector, job and wealth creation, and poverty alleviation in the society which is capable of reducing insecurity in the country,” he said.
One of the beneficiaries, Adama Balla, commanded the gesture, adding that it would boost their businesses.
Highlights of the occasion included the inauguration of Borno e-commerce platform, created by the Borno State Ministry of Science and Technology.
The platform is designed to enable business operators to register online, to enhance customer access to their services.
